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Sunday, June 24, 2012

How to Throw a Rainbow Party

My friend Michelle's little girl just turned six. She asked if I could help her out with her rainbow party, and I was more than happy to. It was really fun doing all the cute, bright decorations.

Wes spent a long time hanging all those streamers.

Michelle and I made that rainbow pinata.

Balloon wall.
We used it later for a dart game, but first it was a cute decoration. (it was really hard to get them perfectly straight, and quite honestly, by the time we were putting them up at 10:30 the night before the party, we didn't really care.) If you want them more perfectly aligned you could measure where each one is going to go before you put it up.

Tissue pom poms. (If anyone is wishing for a tutorial on these, I could do one. Leave a comment.)

Very bright and festive!

Food.

The whole table:

Fruit kabobs.

Veggie tray, popcorn balls, candy.

Jello cups.

Ham & Cheese and PB&J's.

Rainbow slush (before it had gone slushy.)
This is just popsicles taken out of their plastic and broken up. Sugar overload? Totally, but the kids loved it.

Playing games. (Pin the cloud on the rainbow in the background, there.)

Pinata.

It was kind of hard to see it bashed to pieces after all the work we put into it. The kids loved it, though.

The cake.

The kids were surprised to see how colorful it was inside. This cake turned out totally awesome, if I do say so myself.

Look at how happy that birthday girl is!
(She has a piece of cake as big as her head, how could she not be?)

Here is the recipe:

-2 Duncan Hines cake mixes
-1 cup vegetable oil

-6 eggs

-2 cups of sour cream

Preheat oven to 350.

Divide the cake batter into six equal bowls (large cereal bowls work great.)

Dye each bowl with a different gel food coloring. Add the color a little at a time until you get it to the shade you want it to be. (It will pretty much cook up the same color you dye the batter so don't worry about it darkening in the oven or anything.)

Bake (you can cook them two rounds at a time) for approximately 15 minutes, sticking a toothpick in at the end to make sure its done. If not, just give it a couple of minutes more here or there as needed.

When they come out of the oven, cool on cooling racks, then assemble your cake, icing each layer as you go. To help the cake have a little more structure, you can stick drinking straws down into the center and in other areas you feel need support.

Pictures in front of the rainbow wall.

We also took some group ones, but I didn't dare post pictures of other people's kids without permission, so here is just the birthday girl.

There you have it, a Rainbow Extravaganza!

It was a total success, and one kid even said, "This is the funnest birthday party I have ever been to!" (Admittedly, he was the same kid who a few minutes before had said this was only the second birthday party he'd ever been to...but we'll take it.)